Goodbye HomePod Mini in Space Gray; Hello HomePod Mini in Midnight

Apple Newsroom:

Today, Apple introduced HomePod mini in midnight, made with 100 percent recycled mesh fabric. At just 3.3 inches tall, HomePod mini offers big sound in an impressively compact design. With a seamless, acoustically transparent mesh exterior and a backlit touch surface that illuminates from edge to edge, HomePod mini is a stunning smart speaker that complements any space. HomePod mini in midnight is available starting Wednesday, July 17, and joins other bold colors, including yellow, orange, blue, and white.

This confused me for a moment, because they make it sound like they’re simply adding this new color to the lineup. But midnight is actually replacing the subtly different space gray. The bigger question: is this a sign that a second-gen HomePod Mini is not coming soon? The current models debuted in November 2020, and are powered by the S5 chip from Apple Watch Series 5.

Update: Thinking about this some more, it’s kind of odd that it took Apple this long to swap space gray for midnight with the HomePod Mini. For consumer-y products they shifted from space gray to dark-with-a-slight-hint-of-blue “midnight” starting, I think, with the Series 7 Apple Watch models in 2021. (The Series 6 lineup introduced a dark blue, but it was called “blue”, and there was still a color called space gray.) The entry model MacBook Pros still offer space gray for their dark option, but the higher-end models are either silver or space black. Dark iPad Pros are space black. Dark iPhones are “black”, not gray — both Pro and non-pro. And the second-gen full-size HomePods, introduced in January 2023, have only ever been offered in white and midnight. Makes me wonder if Apple produced a bunch of space gray HomePod Minis all at once, when the product debuted, and has been waiting for them to sell out before switching to midnight.

Space gray remains a color in Apple’s palette, though. The darkest MacBook Airs have been offered in midnight ever since the new form factor debuted with the M2 models in 2022, but they do still offer models in space gray (along with silver and starlight). iPad Air and the due-for-an-update iPad Mini are still offered in space gray too. The pattern I detect is that if it’s black-ish and consumer, Apple uses midnight; if it’s black-ish and pro, it’s space black or just black. The exception is the regular iPhone 15, which is offered in just plain “black”, but the superseding pattern there is that Apple has always offered (at least one!) “black” iPhone with each generation.

★ Monday, 15 July 2024